Congressman Ciro Rodriguez is having a townhall meeting this afternoon in San Antonio. My Young Conservatives of Texas chapter and I plan to ask him a few questions about the Democrats’ poor spending habits, big government and awful taxation.
Democrats should answer these questions:
The state children’s health insurance program was supposed to be a modest program to provide coverage for poor children who are ineligible for Medicaid. The block grant capped total spending and gave states flexibility. Now both the House and Senate have passed dramatic expansions of the program to cover children in middle class families making as much as $80,000, paid for by raising taxes on cigarettes, which are paid largely by the poor. I believe we need less government involvement in health care, not more, and market-based reforms to empower consumers. What is your position on SCHIP and how can we prevent it from leading to a total government takeover of health care?
Congress continues to raid Social Security surpluses to spend on unrelated programs, to a tune of in excess of $1 trillion since the 1983 payroll tax hike. Given the fact that Social Security cannot meet its long-term obligations, it is literally insane to spent payroll tax dollars on unrelated programs. Would you support a segregated fund, as Sen. Jim DeMint has proposed, to protect Social Security surpluses to be spent only on Social Security?
The federal death tax is going to be repealed in 2010 but roar back to life at a punitive 55 percent rate in 2011. This is an unfair double tax because people pay taxes all their lives, and when they die they should be able to pass on everything they worked for to their children. The death tax encourages a reckless die-broke ethic that says you can’t take it with you and you can’t leave it to your kids, so spend it all on reckless consumption. That is un-American and unacceptable. Do you support complete, permanent death tax repeal, and would you oppose a so-called compromise such as offered by Sen. Max Baucus that would keep the tax in place at a 45 percent rate?
And finally,
An excise tax on cigars and cigarettes is being discussed to cover the large expense on the SCHIP program, do you believe it’s fair to force taxpayer’s to be accountable for socialized medicine?
I’ll report back this afternoon with what Congressman Rodriguez thinks about his party’s big spending and big government.
